Alumni & Campus Stories

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Paul Hergenrother in his lab

Ingenious: Breaching Molecular Walls

Researchers have long run up against “a wall” in attempting to thwart some of the world’s deadliest bacteria. That’s because antibiotics cannot penetrate the membrane walls of those pathogens, says

Salvador E. Luria at his office desk at MIT, circa 1969.

Ingenious: Eureka Moment

Salvador E. Luria’s breakthrough research on bacteria and genetics can be traced to a chance encounter on a stalled trolley in Rome during which he struck up a conversation with

Ingenious: Field Guide

Victor E. Shelford has been called “the father of animal ecology” because he was one of the first scientists to study natural environments as communities of complex relationships among animals

Ollie Watts Davis and William Warfield standing together at a podium on stage reviewing sheet of paper.

Ingenious: A Light on the Prairie

Ollie Watts Davis, MMUS ’82, AMUSD ’88, has been enamored with lighthouses ever since her childhood. Davis says she collects lighthouse statues because “they serve their singular purpose effectively. I

Ingenious: The Joy of Research

Rudolph A. Marcus’ world changed forever when he garnered the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1992. The honor “was an order of magnitude bigger than anything I had experienced—maybe two

Joel Stebbins

Ingenious: Photometry Star

When Joel Stebbins began his astronomical research at the U of I in 1903, his new wife, May Louise, wasn’t happy that her husband spent so many evenings at the

William Warfield

Ingenious: Old Man River

William Warfield was expecting a long day of recording, as he prepared to sing the iconic song “Old Man River,” for the classic MGM musical, Show Boat, in 1951. But